FITC 2009 Amsterdam has started this morning and everything looks great ! Mike Chambers, Lee Brimelow and Serge Jesper presented the Adobe Keynotes showing some cool stuff on Flash CS4, AIR and mobile.Mike Chambers announced the upcoming release of AIR 1.5.1 as a bug fixing and maintenance update.

Aral, Ralph, Brenden, and Koen have just finished their talks and they were very inspiring (as usual).

Don't loose the occasion to get inspired by cool speakers at the FITC
2009.FITC returns to Amsterdam, The Netherlands with two days of presentations
and one day of workshops focused on all aspects of Interactive design
and development, February 22-24, 2009 at the Felix Meritis European
Centre for Arts and Sciences.

The
much acclaimed two-day event includes over 40 presentations covering
business, creative and technical subjects, plus pre-festival workshops,
and nightly parties as only FITC can deliver. This is the second year
for FITC Amsterdam, which last year sold out over a month in advance.See you there !

We are delighted
to announce that the Super Early Bird pricing has been extended for
Christmas! FOTBM09 is on track to be another super cool FOTB, we have some
of the best names in the web world speaking, and our pricing can not be
beaten!

That's right,
tickets for Flash on the Beach Miami
09 are on sale NOW! Do not miss out on the hottest Flash conference
of 09, get your tickets now whilst they are at Super
Dooper price! Tickets are live now.

Don't forget, the first 199 tickets are the
lowest price around! As soon as they have gone, we are onto the next
priceband. First come first served, the early bird catches the worm, if you
snooze you lose, etc etc. Pick your own phrase for those missing out on one
of the lowest price tickets for this awesome event ever! They will
go fast! click here
to get your tickets now.

Actually Flash On The Beach is the less expansive high level conference of its kind !

Want a chance to
win a 3 day pass to Flash on the Beach Miami?

Just put one of the
FOTBM09
badges below on your site, fire us an email at badges@flashonthebeach.com
to let us know the URL and we'll enter you in a draw for a full 3 day
pass!

That's amazing. MAX Conference is about to begin this morning but we have some real cool announcements (thanks to Ryan for that):

Thermo is becoming a part of the Flash brand under the name Flash Catalyst: Adobe Flash Catalyst is a new professional interaction design tool
for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content
without coding. These can range from interactive Ads, product guides
and design portfolios to user interfaces for applications. Flash
Catalyst enables designers to start from static compositions created in
Adobe Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4, or Adobe Fireworks CS4 and
convert the artwork into applications and interactive content. (read more from Ryan Steart blog)

AIR 1.5 : in this release, some of the additional capabilities now
available to AIR developers include the following:

Encrypted local database: By popular request from
developers, we've added a way of encrypting the
local database inside of AIR. While encrypting data in AIR has been
possible since AIR 1.0, using the Encrypted Local Store (ELS)—the new
encryption support—offers better support for encrypted larger data files and is
generally more convenient since many developers prefer to persist using
the local database.

Flash Player 10 capabilities: Adobe Flash Player 10 is one of
the most significant releases of the player, with groundbreaking new
capabilities. We've updated the version of Flash Player included with AIR to
version 10. For example, it's now possible to take advantage of custom filters,
blend modes, and fills with Adobe Pixel Bender. AIR 1.5 also supports the new
3D effects, including perspectiv,e correct transformation, and animation of 2D
plans in a 3D space (also known as postcards in space). Rich media
enhancements include dynamic streaming to improve the quality of video playback
based on bandwidth availability as well as support for the Speex codec for
delivering high-quality audio at lower download speeds.

WebKit update: The version of WebKit included in AIR has
been updated to a newer version. The updated version includes Squirrelfish, a
new bytecode interpreter that improves the execution speed of JavaScript for
common actions. Our internal tests show that HTML-based AIR applications run as
much as 35% faster for many types of operations.

The Flash Platform has released CoCoMo, one of the coolest products
at Adobe. CoCoMo is basically a framework that lets you add
collaboration to any Flex application out there. It comes with a few
basic components like video chat, text chat, and whiteboards, but it
also includes hooks so that you can build your own real-time
collaborative application. Codename "Cocomo" is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex
developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA
(rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client
components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to
build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than
ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like
deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Stay tuned because more news have to come at the Adobe MAX Keynote in less than one hour.

Yesterday night I've received an interesting email from Adobe that updates me what's happening on MAX on a daily basis. So this is what I should expect to see today :

Register Early to Avoid the Rush!
Registration opens today for all MAX attendees at both the Marriott San
Francisco, Yerba Buena Level and Moscone West, Level 1. Both
registration areas will be open from 7am to 7pm today so beat the
Monday rush and register early. If you are registered for a pre-event
lab please come and register at the Marriott San Francisco location so
you can get to your class early!

MAX Playground
Hang out in the MAX 2008 Playground and try your chops at Guitar Hero,
Halo 3, or Wii Sports. If you prefer classic games, check out the
“retro” video games and foosball tables as you catch up with your peers
at the Moscone West, Level 2, from 7am to 7pm.

MAX Store
Be the first to visit the MAX Store and pick up MAX 2008 and Adobe
branded clothing and collectibles, as well as books from some of our
publishing partners. It’s located at the Moscone West, Level 2 and is
open today from 7am to 7pm.Discount on ALL Adobe products and training
We are proud to offer all MAX attendees 10% off your next Adobe Store
purchase. To take advantage of your savings, visit the Adobe Store
online at www.adobe.com/go/max2008. This offer is only good till December 4, 2008 so buy now!MAX on Adobe TV
Adobe TV is your free, online video source for expert insight,
instruction, and inspiration on Adobe tools and technologies. Following
MAX, we will be posting session content on Adobe TV. Visit tv.adobe.com
to catch any sessions you may have missed, and to view a vast
collection of over 1,000 videos featuring tutorials, tips & tricks,
and demos.Pre-event Attendee Reception
A special reception for MAX 2008 pre-event attendees, hosted by Intuit,
will be held this evening. This reception is exclusively for those who
are attending ADIM @ MAX, pre-event labs and the pre-event session.
Refer to your final details email for your invitation to attend an
evening of food, beer, shooting pool, and great fun with friends. The
first 500 attendees to arrive will receive a limited edition,
customizable t-shirt.

Two days are missing to the MAX Conference so it's time to share with you my agenda of sessions. This year was very complicated to choose from several cool speeches. And I'm sure I'll pass from one to another :)

The combination of unbelievable presenters from around the globe,
incredible networking opportunities, and the infamous FITC parties, all
with the amazing backdrop of the city of Amsterdam, creates a stage set
for the unexpected.

Comtaste and Adobe Italy are organizing a series of events dedicated to the Enterprise RIA development using Livecycle Data Services and BlazeDS with Flex 3 and AIR. On November 5th in Milan, there will be one of those meetings titled:

In this event Comtaste will show some of their projects we're working on in the Enterprise contexts (an Enterprise Dashboard application, a multimedia recruiting system, a customized start-page library and many other).